Forrester’s newest survey of the IT spending environment has encouraging news that underpins our forecasts of a rebound in industry fortunes after the nasty recession of 2008-09. The good news for tech vendors is that IT budgets and purchasing plans are starting to reflect an improving economy. Last week, Forrester released results from our “Global IT Budgets, Priorities, And Emerging Technology Tracking Survey.” Among the top-level results: just over 40% of the 2,800 IT decision makers surveyed expect to increase their organization’s overall IT spending in 2010, up from just 12% in 2009; another 33% expect to hold their spending steady. So the overall IT budget environment has turned positive.

Respondents identified the top business priorities supported by IT investments as: 1) grow company revenue, and 2) reduce operating costs. No surprises there. But we were intrigued to see that “Drive new market offerings or business practices” ranked number 4, indicating that respondents are looking to IT to support and enable new product innovation.

We also see an uptick in spending on offshore IT services in 2010 vs. 2009, across ALL geographies.  Survey results also show that more than half of respondents have either implemented or are planning to implement SaaS, illustrating the tech industry’s continuing shift toward new purchasing models based on operating rather than capital expenditures.  

Forrester's Global IT Budgets, Priorities, And Emerging Technology Tracking Survey, Q2 2010, was fielded to 2,803 IT executives and technology decision-makers located in Australia/New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, China/Hong Kong, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, the UK, and the US, at SMB and enterprise companies with 100 or more employees. You can take a look at the survey questionnaire here. And for more information, leave a comment on this blog post, or contact Forrester’s Business Data Services team at businessdatarequest@forrester.com.